


1981: A Sonata in Saturn

by eldritcher



Series: Pandemic [7]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: BDSM, Established Relationship, Filthy, Kink, Kink Negotiation Through Greek Mythology, Love, M/M, Porn, Power Exchange, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-14 03:15:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29536002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eldritcher/pseuds/eldritcher
Summary: In which, Voldemort's sex life takes some interesting turns.Porn. Very Gay Porn.
Relationships: Abraxas Malfoy/Tom Riddle, Abraxas Malfoy/Voldemort, Harry Potter/Tom Riddle | Voldemort, Severus Snape/Voldemort
Series: Pandemic [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2137872
Comments: 12
Kudos: 29





	1. The Chastisement of Circe

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Prometheus Triptych](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/763914) by eldritcher. 



> This is filth. Please watch your step. 
> 
> Since we are fielding complaints about the lack of perversion, astronomy, and perverted astronomy in our recent Pandemic adventures, here are nibbles for the perverted astronomers and the astronomical perverts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From Abraxas's perspective.

**Act I: The Chastisement of Circe**

  
"Your birthday is next month. What shall we partake of?" I asked Riddle. 

He hummed absently from where he was seated at my desk, pressing flowers. 

Every year, at autumn's turn, he pressed flowers for Narcissa. As a girl, solitary and depressed, winters had been cruel to her mental health. We had tried to preserve summer's flowers with charms, and had sent them to Hogwarts when she had been a schoolgirl. The stark contrast of the bright of the blooms to Scottish winter had not aided her turmoil.

Riddle had then embarked upon pressing flowers for her. He chose autumn's Chthonic flowers, muted and sombre, to acknowledge the pall of the season. The girl had kept the flowers carefully stashed away, year after year, and she had grown from strength to strength. 

Saturnine. 

Saturn's plants were lonely and solitary, growing on the edges of terrain's change. Saturn's children were lonely and solitary, and Narcissa had grown in autumnal transitions from childhood to wisdom, without knowing romance or carnality. Riddle had been born in Saturn's high tide, in the transition of a year into another, as change inevitable even in winter's barren grasp of stasis. 

"What flowers did you select this time, Riddle?" 

"Are you going to regale me with floriography now?" 

"Someone must educate the uncultured heathen you have become," I teased him. 

There had been nobody to read him stories in his childhood. He hearkened to my tales wide-eyed, though we were no longer young boys partaking of pleasure's follies. 

"Enchanter's nightshade," he said, showing me the delicate stalk of flowers. 

"Circe's nightshade," I told him, settling back against the pillows he had propped up for me on our bed. "Circe seduced Odysseus with a potion of this nightshade, they say."

Riddle's eyes sparkled bright in merriment as he thumbed a burr on the stalk he held. 

"Are you my Odysseus?" he asked, coquettish in the skim of his finger along bud and burr, in the tilt of his head exposing the line of his neck. 

All these years, and we knew to play each other as fiddles. I grinned. 

"When her trickery was found out, Odysseus punished her. The Chastening of Circe was a lewd and noisy undertaking."

"Lewd and noisy, you say," Riddle mused, voice tight with suppressed laughter. He leaned back in his chair, setting aside the pressing of the flowers. 

"He had his men thrash her arse soundly before all," I ventured. 

Riddle was not given to submission or masochism. However, in times as this, lulled by domesticity's warm song, he relented to my whims with easy grace. Sure enough, a smile escaped him, before he composed himself to solemnity to continue our banter. 

"Dear me, was the poor woman clothed?" he wondered.

The concern in his voice would have come across as appallingly sincere to one who did not know him so very well. 

He had always been a good actor.

"Clothed?" I exclaimed, shaking my head. "She was stripped before the men, and made to bend over, exposing her charms to rowdy catcalls. Then she was spanked and birched, until she was sobbing in chastised surrender."

Riddle's amusement had faded away into curiosity. He was ever avid to hear the wishes and wants I nursed, despite how obscene they might be. It had taken me decades to learn to voice them, and I blamed him for inciting my dissolution. 

Amusement. Curiosity. Arousal. 

I had learned the stages of his fall a long time ago. 

"A helpless wench, chastised and bare. Surely it cannot have ended there. We know how men are," Riddle urged. His hands were clasped steepled, and he betrayed nothing yet, but I knew him. 

"They fed her the potions she had plied them with, turning her to a senseless and wanton whore."

The crudeness made Riddle startle. He looked away, striving to compose himself once more.  
  
"Then they had her suck every cock, from the ship's boy's to the captain's."

"Dear me," he managed.   
  
"It was not over yet for the wicked temptress!" I warned. 

"Of course not." 

His hands were pressed white on the desk, as if reining himself in. Oh, he would fall. He and I knew that. 

"She begged for cock, lewdly, with word and body, and they gave her none."

"How cruel!"

"Fiery as the sun rays had been the red of her hair, on her head and in her secret places. They trussed her up as a pig, and shaved her under the noon's bright, leaving her bare as a child."

He swallowed, and said in a voice that fain managed to hide his keen interest, "What did they do to her afterwards?" 

"They gave her their fingers and spit, in those secret places."  
  
Riddle flinched, and the flush on his features was not from the hearthfire's warmth.

"Come here," I coaxed him. "Sit beside me. The rest of the tale is obscene."

All these years, and the sight of him aroused by my voice and words never failed to awe me. He came swiftly to my side, and did not protest when I stripped him of his winter's flannel. 

Bared to me, he was lovely and dear. 

Bending to his ear, I whispered, "They slapped her weeping face with their cocks. She begged and begged, in vain, for they laughed and spent their seed on her lovely skin, leaving her unfilled and unfulfilled." 

Riddle's cheek was warm when I brushed the back of my hand against his face. 

Unable to resist him when he was teetering and flustered, I kissed him. He came with a gasp, clutching my arm, eyes falling closed, lips reddened by mine, and the startling peace that took him in orgasm's wake was a sight I enshrined in my heart, though I had seen this vision a thousand times before. 

"I was not done with the tale," I told him later, after lying idle with the insensate heap of him upon me for a while. 

"I believe I understand the gist of it," he promised me. 

"What shall you have for your birthday?" I asked, laughing. 

"I see that you are determined to gift me an orgy," he said wryly. Then he turned serious, and said cautiously, "Abraxas, we are in the middle of a war."

Oh, good. 

At least, he had not thrown all caution to the wind.

I worried for him. 

He was fearless and impulsive, and had often acted in haste before thinking matters through. 

"It shall be nigh impossible to conduct an orgy, though it breaks my heart to disappoint you, Riddle." 

"I shall live without," he murmured, amused. "I am turning fifty-five, Abraxas."

Fifty-five, and I rued the fifteen birthdays of his childhood I had not been able to mark for him, when he had starved in an orphanage dank and miserable, Saturn's child, lonely and wretched, on the outside looking in. 

Fifty-five. I skimmed my fingers along his brow. 

My Circe. Enchanter. 

And enchanted in turn, I mused, sorrowed. 

The poliovirus had nearly killed me at fifteen. Only Riddle's foolish and brave intervention had saved me then, leaving me a dying cripple sustained from breath to breath by his remarkable magic. 

It was a cruel bond of magic, of master and slave. The plantation owners of the American South had bound their slaves thus, draining them of magic at whim. The feudal lords of old Britain had bound their Wizarding vassals, so that they were safe from uprisings and revolts. 

When I was alone, in night's dark, I would sometimes meditate on our bond, and find myself aghast once more at how Riddle had surrendered his magic willingly, to save me. 

It was not his love that had brought me to hold him as mine.

It was his trust. 

Circe had been the archetype of the predatory seductress. And she had bound herself willingly to Odysseus's whims. Saturn's child, hadn't she been? Alone on her island, awaiting to be seen and held and loved, for more than the sum of her power and beauty. 

Lonely, she had wanted desperately to trust. She had known no other way than to seduce and test the men that came to seek her affections. 

Riddle had wanted to end his loneliness, and had willingly given himself, first his magic and then the rest of him, to a dying cripple he sustained from breath to breath. 

"How do you mean to despoil me this year?" he queried, sensing that my thoughts had veered into darker places that he had long made his peace with. 

"A stud," I proposed, delighting in the blush that suffused him. "A stud who shall obey my every command. One young and well-endowed, so that he can be of service again and again, until you are made a senseless and vulgar thing that begs." 

"You demand my obedience?" Riddle asked, voice thick with arousal and curiosity. 

He was not given to submission, but he was curious and his impulsive curiosity had, turn after turn, proven his downfall. 

"I demand your _surrender_ ," I stated. 

Laughing, he kissed me. 

"As Circe?" he teased. "Well, then, I shan't refuse you."   
  
Saturn's child, and he gave himself to me.


	2. The Seal of Solomon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Snape's perspective.

**Act II: The Seal of Solomon**

"Snape."

I hung back, wary of Malfoy's attention. He paid little mind to the likes of me. 

Rumor went that he was Voldemort's sanctuary. Voldemort chased prophecies and went to war with the government with impunity because of Abraxas's gold and protection. In turn, Voldemort had taken a cripple for a lover and remained bafflingly loyal to their arrangement. 

I did not understand why. 

Voldemort's magic, strange as it may have become over the years, was still startlingly lovely in its fraying sweep of yew's evergreen. He may have lost his face and form to his folly, and even his magic was decaying, but what he was sufficed to draw those seduced by magic's allure. He could have courted other alliances easily. He remained constant, orbiting Abraxas as he had since their boyhood. 

I did not understand why. 

There must be a darker reason, I speculated, though information had been scant on the ground about their long rapport. They held to their privacy, despite the public figures of notoriety they had become. 

Malfoy's House Elf urged me to his office. There, seated behind his desk of mahogany, while the gramophone played a country song I could not identify, he continued watching me. 

"What can I do for you, Mr. Malfoy? 

Poisons he needed brewing? Abraxas Malfoy rarely lowered himself to acts of war or terror. His concerns were of another ilk. 

"Have you had intercourse with anyone yet?" 

Intercourse? I stared at him, trying to suppress my hysterical laughter at the word he had spoken. Who called it that? And whyever was he asking me about this? 

Then I blushed. 

I was turning twenty-one, and I had not had sex yet. Rosier and Mulciber had tried to take me to whorehouses in Bonn. I had refused, making up increasingly creative excuses as to why I wanted to wait. 

_Waiting for the right woman_ , I might have told them, if only they might offer me the solace of understanding. Unfortunately, the woman I loved was the Deputy Headmistress of Hogwarts, and she would toss me into Azkaban, than grant me an audience to extol her with my paeans of longing. 

The mewling yearning was unbecoming and untethered in reality, I knew. I could die any day in this damned war. So I had pragmatically promised myself that I would get rid of my virginity in Bonn, on the eve of my twenty-first birthday. 

"Take this potion," Malfoy ordered, nodding to a vial that his House Elf brought over to me. 

A Timed Oblivion Potion. Voldemort's brew. I looked up at Malfoy. 

"For eight hours," I evaluated. 

"Very good," he said, lips twisting into a smile. Even his smiles were pained, from the chronic ailments he carried. 

It became transparently obvious then, what he sought. 

Rumor went that Abraxas Malfoy was incapable of sexual intimacy, his health preventing matters of that nature. There had been gossip in the throng I mingled with that Malfoy occasionally selected discreet liaisons for Voldemort. 

I had not anticipated losing my virginity to Voldemort. I tried to stare down Malfoy, seeking an opening to claim it was a joke in poor taste. He was not his son. He held his expression blank, and watched me unblinking.   
  
I blinked first.

Bugger. 

"What did you want?"

"Drink." 

Oh, we were not doing this. I did not expect to survive their damned war. I marched to his desk and offered him a vial in turn. Veritaserum. He laughed, pleased. 

"Together, then?" I dared. 

"Very well, Snape." 

I would not remember anything for the next eight hours. He would be truthful for the same period. A bargain well-made. That turned me suspicious. Why would he accept the terms? 

"It is Voldemort's birthday tomorrow," he told me. 

I was to be his present. Voldemort's magic was seductive, on the rare times he was unguarded enough to forget reining it in. Malfoy's merriment was plain when I flushed. 

"You shall enjoy this," he promised. 

I would not remember anything. Boldly, I told him, "I haven't been fucked before." 

"That shan't be required of you tonight," Malfoy said calmly. 

All my blood rushed to my cock at the implication in his words. 

"Should I have Dobby fetch you the smelling salts?" the bastard enquired politely, seeing my plight. 

Pride stung, I scowled and decided to show him how worldly I was. 

"What are the parameters of the engagement, Mr. Malfoy?" 

There, that sounded worldly. All the James Bond films I had watched in an attempt to bond with my drunk of a father were finally proving to be of use. Voldemort was not a terrorist's sexually frustrated supermodel wife, but I would have to translate as best as I could. And come out on top. Come out on top! I suppressed the urge to holler what I was about to do to the world. 

"Back to earth, are we, Mr. Snape?"

"Severus, please," I said brightly. 

"You shall be voiceless." 

"What-"

"The parameters of engagement. Do keep up." 

Then I realized who I was negotiating with. Abraxas was fiercely protective of Voldemort. 

"Voiceless. You shall act upon my bidding, and not a touch beyond, regardless of the circumstance."

"Mr. Malfoy-"

"An Unbreakable Vow, should you agree, or we shall speak no more of it and can part bidding each other a good night." 

I gulped. Abraxas was not one to cross lightly, when it came to the madman he kept. I wanted Voldemort. I had abstractly been drawn to his magic's sweet hymns since our first meeting four years ago. His was the magic that stood in stark contrast to Albus Dumbledore's, in the stones of Hogwarts. Powerful, certainly, and alluring too. 

Had I wanted him for sex? No. The thought had not crossed my mind. However, after our conversation, it was all I could think of, and all I wanted. 

Abraxas wanted control over the encounter. He wanted me voiceless, a mere able-bodied puppet to act upon his whims. 

"Is that what he wants?" I asked tentatively. 

"We are of the same mind."

I had no means to ascertain if that was the truth.

This opportunity would not arise again. What had brought Abraxas to me? It must be my lack of experience. He wanted someone he could mould to please them in this encounter. 

In for a penny, in for a pound.

"As you wish, Mr. Malfoy." 

We were bound with the House Elf's magic. 

"Why did you ask me?" I ventured, as the vow settled into my flesh and bone. 

Honesty was hardly pleasant to Severus Snape. Perhaps, in this new turn of my life in the footsteps of James Bond, I might receive a kinder answer. 

"What do you know of Saturn?"

"Saturn?" I stared at Abraxas. Was he as batty as Voldemort? "The planet, Saturn?" 

"Indeed. Saturn rules midwinter's barrenness, according to the astronomers of old. Saturn's children are solitary, lonely creatures that live in the interstices." 

Midwinter. 

I had been born in midwinter. Voldemort, too, everyone knew, had been born at the year's turn. 

Solitary, lonely creatures that lived in the interstices, belonging to neither this world nor another, belonging to neither our times nor another's, in-between and discarded, before we had made something of ourselves. 

Abraxas watched me as if I were a curio in a shop. 

"I remind you of him," I said quietly. 

Honesty was often unpleasant to bear. 

Not this time. 

\----

The House Elf led me to their quarters, tucked away in the east wing, on New Year's Eve. The gramophone was playing Odyssey's _Use it up and wear it out_. I flushed and tried to quell my erection that rose to the obscene lyrics. 

"Enter" 

Abraxas was in the study. I tried to sneak a peek of the adjoining bedroom, but the curtained entryway showed only tantalizing shadows. 

"Tie back your hair." 

I loathed his demeanor. Scowling, I obeyed him. 

"Mask your voice."

He had asked me to be voiceless. And even if I spoke accidentally, he wanted me to speak in a voice synthesized of magic. 

"He is unused to this," he said then, thawing from masterfulness to care. 

That was the truth. Voldemort, in his many vices and madnesses, had ever possessed absolute self-assurance. It seemed a strange birthday gift to give him this. And I saw why it might turn detrimental swiftly. With his magic escaping the tight-rein he held over it, it could well nigh prove fatal to those in his periphery. 

"I will not go against your bidding," I reassured Abraxas. I had no desire to harm. 

A House Elf arrived to transport Abraxas to the bedroom. I waited in the study, alone, and eavesdropped on the conversation in the adjoining room. 

"Someone we know," Voldemort was saying, and the hesitance in his voice was plain. 

Someone they knew. Someone who had sworn bloody allegiance to fight for the madman. Oh, he was utterly demented and would prove my ruin, but I had been drawn in by his magic. If I was to die, as James Bond, after this night, I would have been recompensed in full. 

I understood Voldemort's hesitation. How could he command respect after this night's exploit? He was withdrawn by nature, and had none of the easy and effusive charm which characterized Dumbledore. 

"Riddle, the spell."

"Abraxas-"

"No harm shall visit you tonight."

"I am aware," Voldemort said, and his tone was achingly fond. "I merely meant to implore you to cast the spell."

"I trust your handiwork more."

"Well, you had best not ruin my eyesight then." 

Abraxas whispered the obscuring charm. Temporary blindness. I nearly spent in Abraxas's study, on his fine Persian carpets. 

When showering before my walk to this room, I had mulled if I might be able to perform at the sight of unavoidable masculinity. All my fantasies were of Minerva McGonagall. Perhaps it was not as hardbound as that. Perhaps I merely hearkened to powerful men and women, who, in their primness, woke my salacious urges to debase them.

"What we discussed," Voldemort began then.

"That is inadvisable," Abraxas spoke hurriedly. 

"If I lose my restraint, I cannot hope to refrain from gleaning the identity of your stud."

Stud. I was the stud. 

I was twenty, virginal and mooning after a woman considerably older than me who would not give me the time of day, and my life was turning into a James Bond film. 

_Stud_. 

Voldemort's magic was as a delicate limb, in how he used with precise control. Oh, his sanity slipped often, and it was shameful to watch him then, babbling mind unmoored, but in the moments he was in full possession of himself, he was acutely sensitive in reading the currents of magic in the room and identifying them in certainty. 

And he knew my magic well. 

He was suppressing the urge to discover the identity, playing this game Abraxas had devised. 

If he lost his restraint, he had said. I palmed my cock discreetly through my robes, striving my best not to imagine the visual feast that might be. 

"I have faith in your self-restraint," Abraxas said gently. 

And there was a deeper undercurrent of meaning in his words. Voldemort's mind was a wasteland, torn by his foolish sacrifices on love's altar, but Abraxas believed him capable of something that was no longer in his power. 

Abraxas's was a religion of faith, as Dumbledore's was a religion of love. I wondered what mine was, for I stood straddling their worlds. 

My life was turning out to be as that of James Bond this day. Perhaps as him, I might also find my Queen and Country to serve.

"Come in!" Abraxas shouted. 

I stepped across the screened threshold, and immediately reached out, staggering for balance, against the doorsill. 

Voldemort was given to a certain demureness in his attire. His robes of plain black, while of fine make, hardly framed him in their loose shapelessness. 

In their rooms, he wore thin flax, that clung to his limb and torso, cloth made translucent in the firelight. Taking in the striking picture he made, cast in shadow and form, I wondered how comely he must have been once. 

He faced me, but the spell that had taken away his eyesight and the restraint he employed on his magical senses painted on his features a stark color of vulnerability's make. 

Abraxas, seated upon the bed, propped against pillows many, watched us with keen eyes. His wand of ash was poised wary, protective to the end as the dratted man was resolved to be. Voldemort was impulse given form. Abraxas was the caution that kept him alive still. 

"Riddle, ask the stud to strip you."

Voldemort inhaled sharply, but I saw the steel in him. He meant to see this through. I was sticky between my legs. When had I spent? It did not matter. I had imbibed a potion for virility, fretful as I had been that I might not be able to perform. 

"Could you strip me, please?"

The mellowness in his voice was a strange, precious thing that I wanted to bottle up and clutch fiercely. I wished I would not forget this, at least this. 

Silent, as I had promised Abraxas, I went to Voldemort and clumsily undressed him. I had not undressed anyone before, unless my mother's corpse counted when I had prepared her for burial. 

The warmth of him, the scent of his soap, his unsteady breathing when I pushed down the sleeves of his robes off him; I would remember none of this. Made greedy by the pain of oblivion, I looked up into his eyes and saw plain his curiosity and restraint. 

"Abraxas," he said softly, when he stood before us nude. 

"I am here," the dying cripple promised. 

"Will you speak?" Voldemort asked, and for the first time, I saw him nervous. 

"If you identify this for me," Abraxas said teasingly, and threw a sprig at him. Reflexes slowed by the forced restraint on his magic, Voldemort managed to catch it clumsily. His nostrils flared. 

"Solomon's seal." 

"You astound me," Abraxas teased, and the lightness in Voldemort's laughter I wished I might remember. 

"Floriography then?" 

"Ah, a tawdry tale of lechery, I am afraid," Abraxas said, mirthful. "Get to your knees and suck his cock, Riddle. Hold the sprig in your right hand, please, and drop it to the floor if you wish us to stop."

I nearly came again at the sight of Voldemort falling to his knees, and looking up, eyes wide open in curiosity and unmasked arousal. I had to fist the base of my cock to cut off release. 

"Young," he speculated, inhaling sharply of the musk of me. "He is close." 

"Disobeying me with your impertinence already?" Abraxas demanded. 

Voldemort shook his head, flustered, and hastily brought his hands to my waist, and then his mouth without ado to my cock, suckling at the tip of it with gentle movements. 

"Take his mouth," Abraxas ordered me. 

Swearing, I gripped the back of Voldemort's neck, and pulled him forward. He was not well-versed in this, even I could tell, for his breathing stuttered and he wore his panic plain as I fed him deep to the throat. I was about to let him go, when a rap to the knuckles came forbidding from Abraxas's wand. 

"Breathe, Riddle," he coaxed. "You shan't suffocate. Breathe." 

I could feel Voldemort's heartbeat against my thigh, wild as a bird's, and his hands were clutching my hips in unconscious desperation. I held him there, as Abraxas wished. He took a shaky breath and his tears shone in the firelight upon his cheeks. Overwhelmed, I brought a finger to rub his cheek, and he shifted his cheek instinctively into my caress, seeking. 

It was that gesture which undid me. I came down his throat, copiously and taking up my father's God's name in vain, again and again. 

"Don't swallow. Hold it in your mouth," Abraxas commanded. 

Voldemort closed his eyes; the stark crimson of his features, tear-washed and mortified, was the loveliest sight I had seen. My cock convulsed again, worshipful of the vision. Frightened that I might harm him, I carefully extricated myself, and stood there with soft and floppy bits wondering what Abraxas had in store next.

"Show us."

So, knelt there, trying to regain his breath still, Voldemort opened his mouth and showed us my spend held in his mouth. A trickle escaped his lips, and fell to the floor. 

"Careful, or I shall have you lick it up," Abraxas warned. 

Voldemort's eyes flashed, and the emotion in them was a curious mixture of humor and arousal, even if he was tearful. 

Their rapport, I was beginning to realize, was no matter of power's alliance. They were genuinely fond of each other, and the trust between them was obscene. 

I wished I might remember this. I wished I might one day have this. In that room of three, I remained lonely. 

"Now to my tale," Abraxas said merrily. "Solomon was King in Israel. Sheba came to him, crowned and adorned in the treasures of the Empire by the Nile. He used his seal, and demons bowed to his magic, and in the skies, the Star of David shone down upon him." 

"Do you know, Riddle, the tale of the Star of David?" 

Voldemort shook his head, careful not to spill from his open mouth. 

"The Star of David was Saturn, according to the astronomers of ancient Babylon. In the skies, Saturn rose high, to Solomon's magic, and Sheba saw his power and was awed. _Have me_ , she begged him, under his spell. Seductress of all, coveted by all, she had come to him in entreaty, seeking his hand in marriage."

Storytelling in a scene as this seemed obscene in its own right. 

"She offered him her riches and her power. She offered him her lands and her dominion. He refused." 

"She offered him herself, bare, smooth-skinned and perfumed." 

Unable to resist, I ran a hand across Voldemort's clavicle, from neck to left shoulder, and he trembled under my touch, spilling a trickle from his mouth. 

"He offered her one of his servants, a brute of a man, well-endowed and muscled, and in his court, before his people, she submitted to this barbarian." 

"Then, he took her to his private quarters, and said he was pleased with her, and marked her skin with his seal, right upon the supple mound of her left breast, over her heart."

Voldemort's hand clenched convulsive about the sprig of Solomon's seal. 

"Kiss him," Abraxas ordered me. 

Shocked, I hesitated for an instant. In for a penny, in for a pound. Boldly, I knelt before Voldemort and kissed him, tasting my spend. I had tasted myself in idle curiosity as a teenager masturbating. This was the first time I had tasted it from another's mouth. This was the first time I had swallowed it in deliberation. 

His magic, restless under his restraint, prickled against my skin, tense and nervous, but he kissed without hesitation, teaching me in the act a measure of technique that swift replaced my sloppy inexperienced attempts. His lips were swollen, and every corner of his mouth tasted of me, and when I sneaked in a thumb into his mouth curiously, he opened for me without qualm. 

"Curb your initiative," Abraxas told me dryly. 

Ha! I meant to sneak in nuggets of initiative whenever I could. Voldemort clearly did not mind! If only Abraxas stopped being a possessive and controlling bugger! 

"There is another name for this flower, Riddle." 

Voldemort flushed, and even if he could not see, closed his eyes to ground himself to composure once more. 

"Sow's teats," he murmured, embarrassed.

I cursed softly and thanked myself for having the foresight to take a virility potion. 

"Will you ask?" Abraxas teased. 

"You are here," Voldemort replied, meeting Abraxas in their banter still, safe in his shame knowing who protected him.   
  
I wished I could remember this. Oh, I wished I could remember how he debased himself at Abraxas's whims, but even more I craved to remember this sacred thread binding them spun from trust's loom. 

Voldemort's hands came to mine, and he squeezed my fingers once, before asking, "May I ask you to mark me, upon my breast? Your hands, your mouth, whatever you wish."

His tone was sure, despite the many emotions unmasked in his gaze and the tremble in his thin form. I wondered how he retained this forceful restraint over his magic even when his composure was falling apart in tatters, with each act of despoilment. 

"Pinch his nipples," Abraxas ordered. "Bite them. When you are done with him, I want them swollen as a sow's teats."

"Abraxas!" 

"Your arousal is a cerebral affair, Riddle. Allow me to undress your mind." 

Voldemort sighed, but he held the sprig of Solomon's seal tight in his hand, and buried his head in the crook of my shoulder when I bent to tease his nipples with lips and tongue and teeth. His cock was hardening, in an inkling of arousal. Abraxas was right, I realized. He required a measure of surprise and intensity to lose the control his mind had over his body. 

His chest tasted of him, and the protectiveness of his magic stung my mouth, as I suckled him wantonly. Inspired, sneaking in a measure of agency, I flicked a nipple with my fingers. He cried out, for the first time that night, and his hands dug fierce into my waist. Abraxas did not intervene.

In for a penny, in for a pound. 

Thinking of James Bond, I slapped my fingers light upon his nipples, again and again, in frenetic rhythm, until he was swaying with my movements. I glanced up at him, and saw his composure cracked utterly open, and as if sensing my gaze, he bent to skim a kiss along my cheek, clumsy and undirected. His face was warm, from tears, from the flush of blood. 

"Enough," Abraxas ordered. 

Voldemort shivered, disconsolate, when I moved away. Beginning to understand his preferences, I caressed his cheek, and grinned, pleased, when he leaned into the touch. 

Abraxas had chosen me because I had reminded him of Voldemort. Seeing the touch-starved thing that hearkened to my hand, I wished I might remember at least this. I wished that one day, I might have this safety he knew, in his lover's care. 

It was an instant's wish, superseded immediately by the sight Voldemort cut, kneeling there, tearful, breast reddened and nipples made tautly inflamed by my ministrations. 

"Solomon gave Sheba a wish, then, for bravely bearing his whims," he said, and the coquettish lilt in his tone made me hard again. 

"It is _my_ story to tell, Riddle," Abraxas said dryly. "I have not yet come to regale you with how he gave her a sound thrashing."

"I am merely extrapolating," Voldemort insisted, and his smile was that sparkle in his eyes. 

"My greedy heart." 

"But I am your heart." 

"Oh, you are, and my heart's trouble too."

"Now you are merely delaying my favor." 

"Very well, then, what shall you have?"

"Hold me. I tire of kneeling for you," Voldemort demanded. "I want your touch. You want my surrender. Put me over your lap, and let him thrash me as soundly as you wish. We shall both have our pleasure then." 

Abraxas colored, and nodded. 

"He agreed," I translated for the sake of the blinded.

I was becoming a considerate lover. Walking in the steps of James Bond. Unfortunately, there would be no way to explain my character development to my dear and damned father who was no doubt drinking his liver away in Cokeworth's sleaziest pub. 

Helping Voldemort up, in my newfound considerate streak, I acted the gentleman and led him to the bed, steadying him when he fumbled to drape himself over Abraxas's lap.

"Recite your Petrarch to me, Riddle," Abraxas said lightly. Then he looked to me and ordered, "I want his skin warmed to holly's blush from waist to thigh."

Initiative, I decided. Initiative! I ran a hand down Voldemort's neck to the dip of his spine, and he shifted easily into my touch. Emboldened, I ran my hand in lazy strokes, again and again, and squeezed his arse a few times for good measure.   
  
"Petrarch," Voldemort said, distracted by my touches. "Abraxas, you can hardly expect me to-"

"Oh, but I do! I do!" Abraxas said gently, thumbing the warm smile at the corners of Voldemort's lips. "My heart is a brave and wild thing."  
  
The love in his tone was a holy flame. Loneliness struck me again, and I used the emotion to strike Voldemort. He attempted to shift away, startled, and the line of his back was taut. I lightened my touch in haste. His preference, I had come to learn quickly, was sensation, not pain. 

"You are learning," Abraxas commended me, as Voldemort moved into my touch, and for once there was no superiority awash in his words. 

I grinned, proud. Oh, this James Bond affair was suiting me very well, indeed. I had found life's calling. Satisfied by their pleasure, I kept my touch light. 

"My Petrarch, Riddle." 

"It would be easier to count."

"I shan't waste your breath on the trivial," Abraxas said, laughing. "I care only for verses from your lips." 

_"My passion's folly is so led astray_  
_by following what turns and flees,_  
_and flies from Love's light supple noose_  
_in front of my slow pace"_

Voldemort's voice had lost its mellowness, overwhelmed by sensation and by the restraint he employed on his magic, drunk on arousal, and when Abraxas caressed his face and neck and torso, he keened to be kissed.

Sensing that he had had enough, I stopped the strikes, and ran my hands soothingly over calves and thighs. 

"Lovely thing, heart of me," Abraxas said, and the devotion in his voice was absolute. "How would you like to come?" 

"Your hand, please."

"Shift, then, won't you?"

"No, no," Voldemort said, laughing, shy and determined. "I want your fingers in me, Abraxas." 

"You have a stud ready to fuck you. My fingers cannot compare."

"If it is your whim-"

"Stay there, then," Abraxas said fondly, and Voldemort parted his legs, exposing the place where his body cleaved. Abraxas stuffed a finger in, and then another, and frigged him. 

Initiative! I bent one of Voldemort's legs, and ran my teeth light over the arch of his foot. His muscles tensed, from calf to arse, and he spent on Abraxas's lap. Swearing at the sight, I pulled myself off. 

"Quite the innovative lover," Abraxas remarked, amused, looking at me in exasperation for my many impertinences, before turning his attention entire to Voldemort.

"Riddle?" 

"I refuse to move."

"Oh, I know the slothful postcoital wretch you make," Abraxas said, inordinately tender, running a palm over the delicate sweep of Voldemort's back. His hand lingered on a stretch of marked thigh, and he remarked, "You wear passion's stamp well." 

"I wear your whims well," Voldemort corrected him. 

Abraxas smiled, and recited softly, " _And then if the bit gathers me to him by force, I remain in his sovereign power._ "

And it was the truth. 

He had held Voldemort's magic in his power, from their boyhood. And yet, it was he in Voldemort's power, bound by fierce and willing love. 

Made lonely, I wondered if I might leave quietly, leaving them to their lassitude in this love's boudoir of two. 

Abraxas's expression was hard to read when he saw me shift to leave. 

"Is he leaving?" Voldemort asked. 

"Yes," I blurted out, even if my voice was masked into one he could not discern the identity of. 

"You treated me with care. You have my gratitude."

In his words, I gleaned what he had not spoken. He and I knew that I was not a stranger to him. 

"I wouldn't have harmed you," I promised sincerely, realizing what he had feared at an acquaintance's hands. 

Abraxas would have never imperiled him so. Casting a quick glance at Abraxas's wary features, I bent to cup Voldemort's cheek, and kissed him once more. His mouth opened to mine, and he met my kiss with easy grace. His hand, the one not trapped in Abraxas's fierce hold, came to squeeze my fingers in leave-taking. 

"I hope you found something to your taste," he said sleepily, blinking his eyes in instinct though he could not see.

In for a penny, in for a pound. 

"I found you," I said smartly, for that was true, and for that was what James Bond would have said. 

His laughter, startled and pleased, followed me bright as I hastened out of the room before Abraxas could curse me into a ferret.   
  
\--------

Outside, Saturn was bright in midwinter's sky. 

A day would come, I promised myself. 

A day would come, when I too would have their easy lightness in each other's company, absolute in mutual trust and surrender.

A day would come, when I found the One. 

There were fireworks going off for the New Year.

1981, and I had begun it playing a Sonata to Saturn. 

Then oblivion's wave washed over me. All I knew was myself again. 

\--------

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have never written Harry in the first person before. The next chapter promises to be disastrous, but you have forgiven me worse.


	3. The Virgin's Glove

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I attempted writing Harry in the first person and was unable to get it right. In shamelessness, I've brought a third person narration despite the hash this makes of continuity. Let us pretend that it was the plan all along. Creative fusion. 
> 
> Filth below.

**Act III: The Virgin's Glove**

  
_Swanage, 2020_

"This is fish and chips weather," Harry mused. 

He had come to the gardens, and had been walking along the cliff's edge, taking in the rain-swept coastal paths and winter's grey-palled skies. It was only five in the afternoon. There had been no sunlight for days. 

Perhaps he should buy his coastal cottage after the pandemic in Jamaica. He had tired of grey. 

Fish and chips. Voldemort was not partial to fish in his culinary ventures, but surely as one born and bred in this country, he could not oppose fish and chips!

Harry picked his path through the muddy grounds to where Voldemort was knelt in the flower-beds, tending to winterizing his plants. 

"Can we have fish and chips?" Harry asked. He had never asked before for a dish, he realized. He had been content to eat whatever Voldemort's culinary gambit of the day offered. 

Shivering in the grey of Britain's winter weather, he craved fish and chips. 

"I have no haddock. The blackmarket has found it hard to procure haddock since the pandemic began."

The fishermen must be dead, Harry thought grumpily. C.R.U.P. before its disbandment had tracked the highest mortalities among Wizards there. There were no hospitals in the fishing shanty towns, and it was too late for many by the time they were brought to Glasgow. 

The fishermen were Fudge's greatest supporters. After all, he had fought viciously during the negotiations for the Wall to bolster their fishing rights in the North Sea.

In Wizarding Scotland, haddock was cheap. In the south, they bought it on the blackmarket for obscene prices. 

"Even during the World Wars and the times of Grindelwald, the British governments, both Muggle and Wizarding, had not rationed haddock," Voldemort said. "Analysts had found it the most important factor to retaining the morale of the people." 

Was that why during the negotiations for the Wall, Fudge and Griselda had fought bitterly over fishing rights? Fudge had claimed glorious victory afterwards, though they had landed in a recession since. 

Then Harry remembered his purpose! Fish and chips! It was unlike Voldemort to be purist about ingredients. Any fish would do, surely? 

"Plaice? Pollock? Coley?" 

Voldemort looked up from where he had been pruning out dead and diseased branches of clematis and summersweet. 

"I scavenged during my childhood," he said quietly. "Did you know that fish and chips is the most commonly found food in skip bins?" 

Harry knew that. 

They fell silent. Clearing his throat, Harry returned to staring at the sea and the skies. 

A lone star shone through the clouds, in moon's absence. Not a star, he decided, noticing the gleaming bright of it. A planet. 

"Venus?"

"Saturn," Voldemort corrected him, returning to his pruning. 

"I cannot see the rings," Harry murmured, peering at the bright planet. 

"Here." Voldemort stood up from his task, setting aside shears and trowel. Then he summoned a telescope. "Delphini and Scorpius spent nights watching the night skies, in their childhood."

Had Sirius and Regulus once done the same? 

Had Narcissa and Bellatrix and Andromeda? 

Had Draco?

Had Tonks? 

The Blacks and their stars. 

Through the telescope's lens, Harry caught a glimpse of Saturn's belt, vast and sparse against the darkling space. 

"Draco consoled them when they had been children and worried about this world's many ills. _Look to the stars_ , he would tell them. _A man can look to the mud he crawls in, or to the stars above._ " 

Harry wondered what this world was, that he was forty and alone, with his loneliness eating him inside out, while Ron and Draco had raised families that loved them. 

Faraway, Saturn moved in orbit, implacable and imperturbable. 

\--------  
  
The swell of music matched the waves crashing against the cliffs outside Voldemort's kitchen windows. It must have been one of Delphini's selections left on auto-play. She had a fondness for classical music. 

It reminded Harry of the Imperial March. No, that was not quite right. It was the inevitability of time, not war, that resounded in its symphony. 

"What is this composition?" 

"Holst's Planets," Voldemort said absently, cocking his head as he tasted the batter of beer and water and flour he had been whipping up. "Saturn."

When the pandemic ended, Harry meant to buy a cottage by the sea, and wait alone by the shore, sending messages in a bottle, and long for The One to come to him. Then, in their home, there would be music and laughter by the fireplace, and their kitchen would be cluttered, and they would have fresh flowers in vases. Perhaps they would look at the skies together, and wonder what destiny had kept them apart until then. 

He smelled fish frying in lard.

Startled, he turned to where Voldemort was cutting potatoes. 

"You did not have to," he said quietly. He feared the intense wave of contentment he knew in his bones then. 

"Abraxas was fond of this composition," Voldemort murmured, diverting Harry's attention. "Saturn's child, he called me."

That was unfair. Knowing Harry's natural curiosity when it came to all matters, and knowing his deep prurience when it came to Voldemort's history, Voldemort had hit upon the subject that was guaranteed to shift Harry's attention away from the fact that he had decided to fry up fish and chips, despite his intolerance for the food, because Harry had craved it. 

"Saturn's child?" 

Saturn was the ruler of midwinter's sky, wasn't he? Harry tried to remember his astronomy lessons, but twenty years ago he had been preoccupied with war and survival to pay attention to his studies. 

"He consulted seers and haruspices frequently, in a bid to curb my obsession with a single prophecy," Voldemort said quietly. "I understand now what I did not then. _There will finally come a time of want, death, imprisonment and all manner of sad things_ , he had told me. _Saturn's child, and his seal of melancholy berings you._ "

The light in his voice when he spoke of Abraxas shone brighter than Saturn, hallowed by the ache of mourning.

How could Voldemort have been lonely? He had been loved by Abraxas, through war and madness, and even here, in Swanage, forty years after Abraxas's death, the ash trees rooted strong rustled sweet wind's songs of love. 

Harry had waited in a cupboard, through a war, through twenty years of peace, and nobody had seen him. If a madman could be loved, surely Harry too could be?

"I wonder what he would have made of me," he said, lost in his bleak midwinter's musings.

"Oh, he would have tried to hire you as my birthday gift," Voldemort said.

"Hire me?" Harry asked, laughing, horrified, shocked. 

He had wondered about Voldemort's sex life with Abraxas. Surely, a dying cripple could not have made love to anyone. Had they been celibate? Had it been a romance without sexual intimacy? 

"He was fond of hiring studs. He would order them about, in carefully crafted detail, so that he might see me cracked open before him."

"Wait!" Harry exclaimed, as Voldemort brought over a plate of fish and chips, perfectly fried. "Wait, wait! He hired studs to fuck you? I didn't think that you bottomed."

Harry's failed dating ventures in both the Muggle and Wizarding worlds had come with many vocal assertions from men about how they refused to bottom. It had boggled his mind, how they expected him to be the default bottom in the encounter, since he was short and wore glasses. He had not slept with any of them. He had not slept with anyone in twenty years. Voldemort had been the first to fuck him.

Somehow, he had mapped over his dating experiences to paint Voldemort's preferences. 

Once, he had believed Hermione, and had held hope in equality and a sexual dynamic defined by two instead of by society's norms of masculinity in a gay encounter. 

"Your fish will turn cold," Voldemort warned him, munching on chips from Harry's plate. 

Bottoming was one thing. _Cracked open_ , Voldemort had said. That was a different dynamic. Harry had seen it only in Ron's and Hermione's attempts at writing unrealistic erotic fan-fiction about Dumbledore, and in the alleys of internet pornography he ended up on occasion. 

Abraxas must have been masterful, to have young men for hire pick apart Voldemort under his instructions. What had he asked them to do? Harry flushed, thinking of the many bizarre acts Ron and Hermione wrote of. 

"I told you that your generation did not invent kink," Voldemort said teasingly, seeing the muddling thoughts that beset Harry.

The fish was delicious, flaky, perfectly done. A pity that Harry was now tormented by his active imagination and irrepressible curiosity to pay attention to the culinary marvel. 

"I edit Ron's and Hermione's fan-fiction for them," he said wryly, hoping to draw more secrets out of Voldemort. "Over the years, they have written every kink that can be."

"I defer to your expertise," Voldemort said. Harry liked how bright his amusement was, dappled as star shine on his magic's evergreen. "Abraxas got his ideas from mythology."

"I did not think that you went in for that," Harry managed to say, trying to stick with his facade of worldliness. 

"I had entrusted my magic to him. The rest of it paled in insignificance."

Trust. 

Voldemort had trusted Abraxas when they had been boys, saving Abraxas's life with his magic, binding them together to sustain a dying cripple from breath to breath.

"Did you like it?" Harry ventured. 

"He ailed everyday he lived, toiling under the inevitability of the death that awaited in the wings despite my attempts to stay it. The ventures he took pleasure in, were few and far in between." Voldemort hesitated, and shook his head.

"Go on, please."

"He feared emasculation. In his incapability, he feared that I might tire of celibacy. So he devoted himself to the study of my sexuality, and we enjoyed the resultant nights that came of it, whether they be of pleasure at his conducting or of merriment when his orchestration went awry." 

Harry wanted someone who would learn him, who would learn what made him tick. It was not a matter of getting laid, not anymore. He wanted this incandescence of devotion and trust. 

He had managed to stumble into a sexual relationship with Voldemort, as a distraction until pandemic's end. It had staved off his loneliness and longing for the One. He wondered, however, what Voldemort had to look forward to, after the pandemic. 

"If it is something you want," he offered clumsily. He had no experience in decent sex, far less in the ilk of dynamics Voldemort spoke of. 

"It is not something I would deny if a lover wished it of me," Voldemort corrected him. Sighing, he said, "I noticed your reserve. I merely wanted to reassure you that I am not averse to preferences you may have."

In bed, Harry second-guessed himself. He spent a great deal of time these days on Google, looking up sexual etiquette in a no-strings attached gay relationship.

Voldemort had fried up fish and chips for him. 

Holst's Saturn shifted to unpredictable Uranus, and Harry did not know how to regain his footing on this new terrain. 

\-------

"What is that flower?" He blurted out, when Voldemort came with fresh blooms for the vase on the bedroom mantel. 

"Foxglove," Voldemort told him. Then, merry for a cause Harry did not know, he said wickedly, "Do you know that it has another name?" 

"No," Harry said, wondering what that had to do with anything. 

Voldemort plucked a flower from the vase, and brought it over to bed, taking a seat beside Harry. 

"Digitalis," he murmured, running a finger along the rim of the flower. 

_Digitus_ was Latin for _finger_ , Harry remembered. There was an eroticism to the delicate circles Voldemort's finger tracked about the flower's rim, with calculated slips along the inner walls of the bloom.

"Young boys fucked this with their fingers, in lewd metaphor."

Voldemort liked fingering him open, and despite how Harry tried to hurry him up to the act of fucking, lingered between his legs, driving him frustrated with those teasing, insufficient, maddening explorations. 

With the day's revelations, all Harry could think of was how it might be to reverse their places, to part Voldemort's legs and to linger there, and teach him how frustrating the exercise was.

Voldemort's finger dipped into the flower's bell.

"You have made your point," Harry said, blushing. "Put the flower away and come to bed." 

"Oh, permit me to continue my exposition on foxglove."

Harry laughed at the ardent plea, and impulsively kissed Voldemort. 

Oh, madness! Oh, glorious madness! The pandemic had driven Harry to madness, but at least he had managed to luck his way into sex. 

"Virgin's glove," Voldemort whispered, and his tone had lost its customary mellowness, in how it hitched upon arousal's rough edge. 

Virgin's glove. 

1981 had been a long time ago.

"Has anyone fucked you since then?" Harry asked, knowing the answer he wished to hear. His hands were fisted on the blankets. His magic was a cacophony of screaming want. 

"Perhaps you should come to the conclusion via thorough empirical study," Voldemort suggested, and the coy invitation in his voice Harry could not second-guess. 

Laughing, he nudged Voldemort to straddle him, and kissed him thoroughly. 

"Any other flower facts you would care to share?" he teased. 

"I have reached the limits of my floriographical knowledge of the foxglove," Voldemort admitted. 

"Good." Taking a deep breath, Harry plucked up his wand and stripped them both. Then he lay flat, grinning at Voldemort's curiosity.

Harry's irrepressible curiosity was legendary among his friends, but Voldemort's was cut of the same cloth. Little wonder that they had come to grief, again and again, this unbridled curiosity ruining caution and leaving them foolish.

"On your fours, over me," he said, emboldened by the silly tale of the foxglove. "Face away. I need focus for my empirical studies." 

He had edited this in Ron's and Hermione's fiction, a hundred times. Voldemort moved under his touch easily, and pillowed his head to Harry's thigh, suckling kisses upon his skin there. 

The sight before Harry's eyes made his cock leap, caught against his belly and Voldemort's chest, and wet it was between their bodies. Taking a deep breath, Harry began teasing him open, running a finger along the red of him as Voldemort had thumbed the flower's edges. 

In Ron's and Hermione's erotica, the man on top would be sucking Harry's cock. Voldemort was as bad at multi-tasking as Harry was, so there would not be any of that. The first skim of his finger made Voldemort shift, surprised. 

Harry, despite his flaming gayness, had never fingered himself during a wank. He wondered how Voldemort masturbated. The unstudied, jerky reactions he gathered as he slowly opened the man up for business indicated that Voldemort's wanking practice did not involve this.

"All right?" 

Voldemort made a noise of assent. 

Touch, Harry remembered, and caressed his flanks with the free hand. Tension drained from Voldemort's muscles under Harry's touch, and the give of him under Harry's fingers turned easy. 

"Very good," Harry said soothingly, and second-guessed himself immediately. Was he talking as one of the characters in Ron's and Hermione's pornographic writings? 

His fears fell away when Voldemort sighed and yielded further on hearing his words. 

"You are doing well," he praised, even if the words made no sense, and gave his mouth free rein without letting his head trip him up with second-guessing. 

He had shot himself in the foot, because fingering Voldemort was a delight he did not want to give up, and his cock agreed viciously with him. He began to comprehend why Voldemort lingered in this act. Was Harry as mindless and quiet and easy in give, when he was being fingered? Intoxicated, Harry stroked along the flesh he was buried in, in circles, in spirals, creating alphabets and numbers with the movements of his finger. He had not found the prostate, he was sure, because he had watched enough porn to know that drove men to frantic prayers to God and Satan. 

"Let me show you," Voldemort managed to say, the first sentence he had spoken in a long while. His hand was shaking badly, and Harry nearly came between them when he inserted his finger along Harry's, and guided it into a crooked gesture that bumped against what Harry had been hunting for. 

"Can you come like this?" Harry asked, ashamed and still desperate to see that. "I want you to. Just on our fingers."

Voldemort's mouth was slack against Harry's thigh, and his magic was erratic about them. Beyond words, then. Laughing, Harry moved their fingers together, teasing and plucking and pinching, relentless despite how Voldemort lost his balance and had to be kept up by Harry's fierce grip on his waist. Convulsing about their fingers, Voldemort came between them. The sight tipped Harry.

"We are doing this again," he said, pulling Voldemort to him, caressing him until he settled from convulsions to lassitude. 

"You could have fucked me." 

"Empirical studies cannot progress willy-nilly. I have to chart a systematic plan of milestones." 

"Harry, you work for Fudge."

"Not in this. I am an entrepreneur in your bedroom."

That surprised artless laughter from Voldemort. Gladdened, Harry continued their silly banter, and resolved to delete all his bookmarks on the etiquette of gay sex.

He could figure it out. 

On the mantel was a vase of foxgloves.

They were Saturn's children, sealed by melancholy. They were Saturn's children, trudging on in the face of many sad things. They were Saturn's children, slow to trust and quick to fear. 

Right then, they had each other. 

**Author's Note:**

> Our musical references here: [**Leitmotifs, Themes, and Songs of Pandemic**](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29586945)


End file.
